Smith Expects Good Close to Year In a brief trading update, WH Smith said that “in the High Street Retail business our focus on gross margin gains and tight cost control continues to deliver a solid performance. The Travel Retail business continues its strong performance and is making good progress. Accordingly WH Smith PLC expects the outcome for the year to 31 August 2007 to be towards the top of market expectations.” Smith release Where the Greatest War Lives On Also in the UK, the Telegraph advises that “in publishing… books about the Second World War, fiction and non-fiction, look […]

Court Takes Giacchetto’s Book Rights Under a settlement filed with the bankruptcy court, former money manager Dana Giacchetto is giving up his interest in a book deal for You Will Make Money in Your Sleep: The Story of Dana Giacchetto, Financial Advisor to the Stars, and rights to his story to help pay back $3 million owed to former clients. Reuters says that “the bankruptcy trustee sued Giacchetto last year after discovering that he had set up a company called Legis to sell the rights to his life story to author Emily White in exchange for half of the book’s […]

Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together. “nice deal” $1 – $49,000 “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000 “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000 “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000 “major deal” $500,000 and up   FICTION Debut Sydney Salter’s MY BIG NOSE & OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS, about a […]

Big Opening for YA Vampire Novel The WSJ says that Stephanie Meyer’s YA vampire novel ECLIPSE sold 150,000 copies on its opening day on sale earlier this week, prompting Steve Riggio to comment: “We were anticipating the book would be very big, but it has exceeded our expectations. As booksellers, we’re thrilled.” BN alone reports selling 50,000 copies in the first two days on sale. The first two books in the series are said to have 1.6 million copies in print. Little, Brown was looking for a big opening, but they were projecting 40,000 copies. Publisher Megan Tingely says, “I’ve […]

Harper Finishes Year Well Harper returned to profitability in their fiscal fourth quarter, with earnings of $21 million (versus a loss of $6 million a year ago) on sales of $295 million — up 15 percent from $256 million a year ago. For the full year, the company’s long string of annual earnings increases came to an end, with operating income of $159 million down $8 million from the previous year, even as sales hit a new high of $1.347 billion, up 2.7 percent. News Corp. Release In other corporate report cards, fast-growing Quercus announced mounting losses of 341,000 pounds […]

Starbucks’ Holiday Pick Starbucks has selected LISTENING IS AN ACT OF LOVE – A Celebration of American Lives from the StoryCorps Project, edited by Dave Isay, as their next book selection. They’ll begin selling the Penguin Press book and accompanying CD, comprising 50 stories from everyday Americans, on November 8. Ford to HBG USA and More Personnel News Beth Ford will join the Hachette Book Group in the US as chief operating officer and evp in late September, reporting to ceo David Young. He notes in the announcement, “With the retirement of both Maureen Egen and Rick Hall earlier this […]